Naira continues free fall, depreciates by 11% to N927.19/$ at official market

The naira, on Friday, depreciated marginally to N927.19 per dollar at the Nigerian Autonomous Foreign Exchange Market (NAFEM), the country’s official exchange rate window.

The rate represents a decline of 11.40 percent from the N832.32 recorded yesterday.

According to data from FMDQ Securities Exchange, a platform that oversees foreign exchange (FX) trading in Nigeria, the local currency hit an intra-day trading high of N1,160 and a low of N701.

FMDQ said transactions opened at the rate of N815 to the dollar and closed at N927.19.

The daily turnover recorded at the official window stood at $110.14 million.

Meanwhile, Olayemi Cardoso, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), had said together with his team, he has been focused on stabilising the naira and reining in inflation.

“We have critically reviewed the effectiveness of the central bank’s monetary policy tools and have spent time fixing the transmission mechanism to ensure the decisions of MPC meetings result in desired objectives,” he said.

“For quite some time, there has been a dislocation of our monetary transmission mechanisms rendering the MPC meetings largely ineffective.”

Cardoso said the measures have already started to yield results, as excess liquidity in the banking system has significantly reduced.